


The Onset of Hopelessness

by GettheSalt



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:53:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5354702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettheSalt/pseuds/GettheSalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He didn't come here for you. He came here for me, to kill me. He doesn't do anything for that damn team anymore. From what I heard, didn't even want to save Jemma! He gave up on her, and he doesn't care about you! He only cares about himself.” Ward's crowding into Fitz's space again, but his feet are planted and he's not going anywhere. “You're nothing but a means to an end!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Onset of Hopelessness

Unsurprisingly, they were duped.

Or, more pointedly, Ward was duped. Fitz suspected it all along, but he didn't bother saying anything before they crossed through the portal. There was no point in upsetting Jemma any more than she already was. By now, she definitely knew that things weren't going as planned. She had probably known, even back then, when they were standing, waiting for the Hydra goons to open the portal, that Malick's plan wasn't nearly so cut and dry. She wasn't stupid enough to miss that.

Unlike Ward.

“You have an uncanny knack for being manipulated.” Fitz says, light and conversational, meant to bite. He can tell by the way Ward's shoulders stiffen ahead of him that it did. “I mean, for someone who's so manipulative.”

It's been a total of fifteen hours, and maybe it's the onset of hopelessness, or maybe it's the strangely calm sensation of anger, but he's in control. Of himself, and of this situation. Fifteen hours around Ward has settled his rage from a searing, seething wave into something much more dangerous, that doesn't feel like it will flow away any time soon.

“Shut up.” Ward spits the words with venom, but it's not nearly as effective as he surely hopes. They both know that _he knows_ that Fitz is right, and that they were never meant to be anything more than a sacrifice. Ward was sent here with one purpose and one purpose only.

“You – You stroked its bloody ego very well.” Fitz commends. He knows better than to poke this bear, but there's no real hope left for them. Something on this planet will kill them eventually. There are a few options, from what he remembers of Jemma's story. “That silver tongue of yours works on evil Inhuman monsters, too. Who knew!”

Ward doesn't look back, but as he continues walking, his hands bunch into fists.

“It's too bad the damn thing _took Coulson,_ killed everyone else, and left!” Fitz is aware that his voice is starting to get a little shrill. Maybe he isn't as in control of his anger as he thought, but it feels good. It feels so good to yell at Grant Ward, to tear him down for something, when all he's felt for the man in over a year is fear and disappointment and churning rage. “You didn't even manage to get – It wasn't even - “ Fitz takes a breath. “The portal was two hundred feet away! How did you mess that up?”

Ward stops, then, and turns around so fast that Fitz thinks this is it. Ward's going to finish the job that he started so long ago when he dropped that med pod in the ocean and left him and Jemma to die. It won't take him long. Fitz has been training, a little bit, here and there, but Ward was always fast, always strong. 

Ward doesn't lay a hand on him.

Maybe he's stopped by the defiance in Fitz's eyes, or maybe it's something else, but he doesn't lay a hand on him. He crowds into his space, puffed up, all muscle and threat, but he doesn't touch him, comes just inches shy of doing so. It feels so deliberate, it throws Fitz off for a second. “How did  _you_ mess that up?”

Fitz glares up at him, done wondering why he isn't beating him to a pulp or snapping his neck. “ _Excuse me_ ?”

Ward's eyebrows are lowered, his expression hostile. Fitz can see him clenching his jaw while his nostrils flare. He's angry. Fitz has seen this before, been close to him when he's been like this before. Back then, there was something thrilling about it. Something very harlequin romance about wanting things he shouldn't want, in fits of passion and losses of control. Now, it's something that has Fitz wondering what it will take to push Ward far enough to end it.

“You're the goddamn fucking engineer.” Ward hisses. The planet around them is quiet, like every alien grain of sand is listening to this. “You wanted to get back so bad, you would have figured out where we needed to be before you let me stop.”

Fitz can't help it. He laughs, the sound bursting out of him, mirthless and annoyed. “I  _let_ you stop? You – That's – You're joking.”

Ward swings his arms wide, gesturing to the nothing around them. “Well, you can't expect me to believe that your plan was to stay here with me, vacationing on Jemma's hell planet! Remember what I said about the cartoon puppy dog?” He looms over Fitz while he talks, arms back at his sides, and it should be intimidating; it is, but much less so in the face of Fitz's own anger. “I expected  _that_ from you. Running to her open arms, lovesick, missing her so,  _so_ much after being stuck with me for that long. But what do you do?” It's Ward's turn to laugh, and it's just as humourless as Fitz's was. “Nothing. You stand there, stupid, while that  _thing_ was possessing Coulson, not saying a damn word about us not being in the right place. You could have gotten through that portal. Playing the hero, could've left me alone here with It, if you'd just made sure we were a little bit closer. Can't say it would have worked, but you could have tried. You didn't.”

His arms go up again, and he backs up, taking in the planet as a whole while he stands in the shadow of the bluff they've been walking along. “So now we're both stuck here, the rest of the team is dead, and that thing is running around in Coulson's body, probably waiting to make a snack out of us.” Ward's hands drop and make a dull  _thump_ against his camo-covered thighs as they do. “So, what did you really achieve?”

Fitz smirks. “Will got back.”

It made sense to make the best out of a bad situation. Ward had been sent here, not to lead, like he was so convinced, but to be the vessel that the thing inhabited. It made sense. Grant Ward's body was fit, in its prime, and handsome. It was the perfect form for an Inhuman horror to embody, strong with a face that no one would think twice about. Fitz had been sent as a sacrifice. Malick had known they would need one, that was all Fitz could imagine, from the research he and Jemma had done. He didn't know the planet like she did, but he'd make a fine offering. The team was sent to herd the Inhuman back to earth.

Of course, they hadn't counted on a few things.

First, that Coulson would get through and that, instead of taking Grant, the Inhuman would take him. Fitz could see the logic there, because Coulson was the kind of person that you looked at and trusted. Non-threatening, average middle aged man. In the end, a much better vessel than Grant Ward, easier to use to insidious ends. 

Second, that there was someone on the planet who was living, if not thriving, and that Fitz would make it his priority to get him safely off it. Watching Will disappear through that portal was worth this.

“Astroboy.” Ward says, rolling his eyes. “Jemma's space boyfriend got back to earth. I don't know how that's a good thing for _you_.”

It isn't, but that wasn't the point.

“You don't – I wouldn't expect you to understand.” Fitz musters his most aloof tone, and pushes past Ward, not realizing until he's already striding along the curve of the bluff that he was the one to initiate physical contact between them. It feels good to know that he has some kind of standing above Ward thanks to that.

The issue is that it's that bit of contact that seems to break Ward out of whatever bubble it was that kept him from touching Fitz, and his hand closes on Fitz's elbow, tight, with no give, dragging him back to stand in front of him. Ward is leaning down, now, so far into Fitz's space that he has to lean back to keep away from him.

“Big man, walking away. Walking where?” Ward asks, jerking Fitz's arm as he lets go and circles him. “You're maybe a buck sixty, soaking wet, no weapons, no experience, and that thing's out there. You trying to make yourself a sacrifice?” 

Fitz watches him, wary, trying to appear defiant, and ignore the rustling in his belly, remnants of remembrance of something he once felt, brought on by the memory of being too, too close in the lab. “That's what I was sent here for.” He says, deadpan.

“So you don't have to give in to it!” Ward yells, and Fitz steps away, only to turn and crowd right into the other's space, mimicking his move from before.

“Like you?” He asks, just as loud. “You – You – You always give in, you always bend and _break_ for everyone! You're a bloody _puppet_!”

“And what do you do?” Ward shoots back. “Bend and break under Coulson-”

“-Coulson is not Garrett!” Fitz roars. If the thing hiding out in Coulson's body is around, it's going to come running, but he doesn't care. “He isn't Whitehall! He isn't Malick!”

“Coulson isn't much better than any of them!” Ward argues, and it's probably a bad move, but Fitz smiles, and lowers his tone.

“You're more delusional than I thought. How do you even figure-”

“-He didn't come here for you. He came here for me, to _kill_ me. He doesn't do anything for that damn team anymore. From what I heard, didn't even want to save Jemma! He gave up on her, and he doesn't care about you! He only cares about himself.” Ward's crowding into Fitz's space again, but his feet are planted and he's not going anywhere. “You're nothing but a means to an end!”

There's part of Fitz that wants to vehemently deny what Ward is saying, because it's Ward, and he can't be right. Coulson has taken them all in and kept them together, kept SHIELD together. Ward has a point, though, that he gave up on Jemma. Coulson gave up on him, too, for months before he got angry enough to prove himself. Coulson's first act when he caught up to them on the planet wasn't to assure Fitz's safety, it was so go after Ward. 

Ward has a point, but Fitz can't let that take hold. He can't let Ward's words shake apart his world, again, for however short of a time he's living.

“That's not true.” Fitz says, but it's weak, and it doesn't have the force of anything he's said before. He knows that even without seeing the spark of victory in Ward's eyes.

“You know it is.” Ward smirks, not moving from where he's crowded himself into Fitz's space. “He doesn't give a damn.” 

Fitz needs him to stop talking before something inside him breaks again.

“You're his puppet, and-”

Fitz could have hit him. He could have punched him in the mouth, and ran. Ward was far too caught up in his own self-righteous tirade, tearing down Coulson, ripping apart Fitz's beliefs, and he wouldn't have seen it coming. Fitz could have hit him, but instead his instincts went another way, and his fingers curled in the thick material of Ward's jacket, rather than curling into a fist, and pulled him in, those last few inches, to kiss him.

It wasn't meant to be passionate, it was only meant to shut him up, and stun him. The second their lips touch, though, Fitz feels everything flooding back. Everything that he tried so hard to extinguish, and cut out, everything that he'd thought was gone, feelings that hadn't been appropriate for daylight, that he'd kept tucked away back when Ward had been his friend.

Everything comes flooding back, and it only gets worse, because instead of pushing him away, Ward pulls him in, kissing him back, making his head fill with fire and smoke.

Years ago, this would have been everything he wanted, and now, when he knows he can't want it, he shouldn't want it, he can't deny it. 

He can't keep his hands from tearing at Ward's jacket, yanking it down his arms so roughly that Ward's hands are pulling from Fitz's body. The message is clear, and Ward drops the jacket in the sand, and then he's advancing. Pushing, until Fitz's back is against rock, and it's rough and it's wrong, but he doesn't say stop. He shrugs off his own jacket, and his hands immediately go to Ward's arms, gripping tight, feeling the muscles under his palms, both loving and hating how this is going.

He's supposed to have been over this.

“I thought you hated me.” Ward says, and there's amusement in his words, yes, but the wonder is what Fitz hears.

“I do.” He says. “I do hate- This is just- This is- I hate you.”

“You hate me.” Ward's tone is patronizing, but Fitz doesn't get a chance to argue before he's kissing him roughly, again, and then Fitz doesn't want to argue. He just wants Ward to keep kissing him like that, so that he doesn't think about what they're doing. He doesn't want to think.

He doesn't want to think about Jemma, back on earth. He doesn't want to think of how disappointed everyone would be, he doesn't want to think about the part of him that is going to feel disgusting and weak when this is over.

Fitz doesn't want to think. He's tired of thinking. He just wants to feel, and Ward's giving him that, pushing his pants over his hips, leaving him exposed, hot skin in the cool air.

All he wants is to shut down his brain and feel, and Ward's thumb brushing over the head of his cock while he takes it in his hand does just that. It works nearly immediately, and Fitz feels next to no guilt when he makes the smallest of desperate noises into Ward's mouth and lets his blunt fingernails scratch over his biceps, scrambling to hold on.

“You hate me.” Ward murmurs, while he strokes Fitz's cock, and Fitz rises slightly on the balls of his feet, pushing his hips into that touch.

“So much.” Fitz breathes. “And I – I wish you'd shut up.”

Fitz has never forgotten how good Ward is at taking orders. It's part of why he's been so easily manipulated by all these different people, because they say jump, and he doesn't even  _ask_ 'how high?' before he's leaping. Fitz has never forgotten that, but somehow it still surprises him when Ward smirks and says “Okay,” before getting on his knees.

There isn't much thinking going on after that. Not once Fitz feels Ward's tongue against his cock, and twists his fingers into dark hair, breathing ' _please_ '.

He's going to hate himself later. He's going to absolutely despise himself later, and he knows it, but what's the point in fighting anymore?

They're going to die here anyway.

 

 


End file.
